


Not Blue

by chocographs



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 12:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17001834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocographs/pseuds/chocographs
Summary: There was a clarity to blue, and he could not understand why this thought sank its teeth into him, that wasn’t quite present in the red-brown of Tifa’s eyes. In its place was warmth, warmth that couldn’t quite pretend that he couldn’t see behind silk and steel. Kindness that could not be mistaken for otherworldly or angelic. She could not be revered as something greater than him, no matter how desperately he tried to lower himself to something that was beneath her.





	Not Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hakuen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hakuen/gifts).



Something was there, at the edges of his mind. Just maddeningly out of reach, the way so many things were here. Someone just as stubborn. Just as ready to remain by his side, right or wrong. Someone who had taken on his burdens and carried them as her own for so long that he had forgotten they were being carried at all, thought that he must have always been light as air. And, though he could not remember why, he knew that had been a mistake.

She had been greater than human, she must have been, to do so much and ask so little and to never turn away.

“You know what it is that I am doing.” Kain said. It wasn’t a question – it couldn’t be. He had told her only a few days ago, clear as he could make it without delving into the things he could not understand himself.

Tifa put her hands behind her back, stretching in that way that she did when she was thinking. The movement pushed her chest forward in a way that he might have cynically thought was deliberate were she anyone else, had he not seen her do exactly the same thing when she had no reason to suspect anyone was watching (she always insisted on taking first watch when they had to stop for the night, and he didn’t sleep nearly as well as she seemed to think that he did). He did not watch that, and not even out of propriety. The stretch also seemed to make every muscle in her body stand out as cleanly as if she had been sculpted. He could measure, just from looking at her, the power behind every punch and kick that had shattered the manikins that had attacked them.

“I know what you’ve told me.” She corrected, as he brought his eyes back up from her biceps to her face. “But you’ve yet to convince me.”

“I have spoken only the truth, Tifa.”

She nodded, shaking the tension of that stretch out of her muscular arms and sitting down again. She was relaxed, despite everything. Despite the fact that they were making camp on a great stone platform in some kind of hellish forest, surrounded by the whispers of lost spirits and the distant screams of that great metal beast (a _train_ , Tifa called it, and she seemed convinced that being devoured by it and carried away would be the fastest and safest way to return to Sanctuary). Despite the company. Despite the fact that he had told her, no less than four times, that he was a traitor.

Stubborn. Just as stubborn. Just as determined to see light where there was none.

“You have. I believe you. You’re not the type to make sick jokes. I’m just not convinced.”

“You are making no sense at all.”

Firion had been the first, he had told her. Determined and eager and treating him as an old friend (Ricard, he had called him once, and he could not seem to explain why he had made such an error any more than Kain could explain why it made his heart ache so). He’d done a sloppy job. Missed anything vital with that first strike, when hesitation had turned his hand just a little too much. It had made the whole thing more difficult. Firion hadn’t fought back when he stabbed a second time, only asked why.

“I don’t believe that this is the solution. There has to be something better. If there even is a next time- what happens then? We fight the same horrible things, but without you or the Warrior with us? That doesn’t sound like an improvement, now does it?”

“Then you believe what I’ve done is wrong. I have known that for some time, that I will only ever be seen as a traitor to our cause-”

“-Hey!” And Tifa pokes him in the chest roughly. He can feel it through both plate and chain, and he wonders what might have been of his ribs without them. She’s strong, he has seen her punch clean through the crystal of those manikins, seen her make great enough dents in the breastplate of Garland’s armour with her fists alone that he could not draw breath fully and had to retreat. “I told you before, no putting words in my mouth! I’m not convinced any of this is right or wrong. It just- it just _is_. You just _are_.”

It wasn’t the done thing, Tifa had said, to start a campfire at a ‘train station’. She didn’t seem to mind half so much now, with the flames chasing the goosebumps from her exposed arms and legs. There were colder places, here in this warzone, but the night and the shrill, distant cries were almost as quick to sap heat from a body as the snow further north was. He had travelled light, all the better to carry the weight of his fallen comrades, and had no cape or bedroll to offer her. She had been separated from her own supplies during a surprise attack before they started travelling together. The padding he wore to keep his armour from pinching his skin was enough, but her attire was made for ease of movement and not for warmth.

Right now, the campfire offered something to focus on that wasn’t Tifa’s eyes. Unbearably bright as it was, it was preferable to the emotions that she doesn’t seem to care to disguise. He knew that there was no anger in her, not for him. Disgust, perhaps. Perhaps he would be the one thing she’d ever feared in her life, and he didn’t care for that thought.

Pity would be the worst. The worst and the most likely. Soft and understanding and _accepting_. As if this was the best anyone could have expected of him. As if he were not born to be something better than the one to call the retreat, the one to force it when he comrades would not stop fighting. As if he could never have been greater than this, had circumstances not led them here. As if he could never have been greater than this, had _his own crystal-damned choices_ led him here.

“So, convince me.” She broke the silence when he didn’t respond, moving her hands dangerously close to the fire to warm them and then bringing them back, trying to carry that precious heat to her upper arms.

“You know that I cannot. You will hear the Warrior’s side of our tale soon enough, and perhaps he can help you understand better than I can.” Kain continued to stare at the fire. He couldn’t. He knew that the Warrior couldn’t help her understand. He understood as little as Kain did. Probably less, because Kain had felt the memories first-hand and he had not. But his conviction could rival Tifa’s, and she didn’t ask to understand. She asked to be convinced, and the Warrior could convince anyone that anything was right if he only believed it himself.

“I didn’t ask you to convince me that you were _right_. That’s hardly what you’ve been trying to do all this time, is it? Convince me to leave. Convince me to find the others and warn them. That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it?”

Kain did look at her now, and for all that it was a blessing that her face was entirely unreadable, it was now a little frustrating. Of all the times for her to finally choose to live up to _Lockhart_ , to keep everything to herself instead of wearing her heart on her sleeve.

“Have I- offended?” Was the only phrase that tumbled from his mouth, far more bewildered than he would have liked it to sound.

It was laughable to think that he should have cared if he had. Had his murder of those who put faith in him _offended_? Had his choice to give up on their cause _offended_? Should he care if she got it into her head that he wasn’t being appreciative enough of her presence, in the shadow of so many greater sins?

He did.

“Please. If I was offended by _oh no, do not travel with me, for I am dark and brooding and will only get you hurt_ , I would-” She trailed off, off into something half-remembered, and only turned to look at him and laughed warmly. “-I would never have made it this far without tearing Lightning’s hair out, now would I?”

It was Kain’s turn to chuckle at that, at the joke at Lightning’s expense and at the terrible impression of his voice.

“You want me to go. Something, something, brood, brood, _for my own safety_. So convince me that you’re not worth staying with. And if you can put together a half-decent argument by the time the train arrives, I get on there alone and return to sanctuary. And if you cannot, you do all of this with me at your side.”

_All of this_. More than just the journey back to sanctuary. There were a few left – Lightning, Laguna, Yuna, Vaan. She was asking him to _hurt them while she watched_. Or rather, she was calling his bluff. She thought that he couldn’t do it, didn’t she?

“You wouldn’t allow it.” He said, sighing. “The second you thought they were in danger, you would stop me. You are only inviting me to make war with you.”

She didn’t argue against that. Just shrugged.

“It wouldn’t be much of a penalty for failure if it was _easy_ , now would it? You could always make it easy on yourself, put me to sleep now.”

He would be lying if he said he hadn’t considered it. But even after the potion, he was weak. He couldn’t guarantee that he could bring her to safety. If she was harmed or killed while she was unable to protect herself. If that happened because of _him…_

She was staring into the fire again now. She had made this into a stupid game that he didn’t want to play. A stupid game that he didn’t want to win and have her leave him, and yet couldn’t lose and have her interfere with his mission. A stupid game that he’d already been trying to play all this time, telling her in detail how he hurt her friends. How he betrayed them. How easy it was.

“It is because I am a coward that I am doing this.” He said eventually, and he didn’t know how those words got to his mouth without his mind’s say-so. “Because I would sooner be the first to truly fall, knowing that there is a chance for it to lead to future victory, than to be the last and know that we have failed. I am too weak to bear such a burden.”

Tifa said nothing, only watched him with those eyes that weren’t blue framed by that hair that wasn’t gold.

“Sooner would I be a traitor than a failure. And if this campaign is never destined for success, sooner would I let you and the others be the ones to know that we could have never won and remain ignorant myself. The Warrior believes our cause to be noble, that it will offer you all a greater chance for victory in the coming battles, and I hope that he is right. But I have never been under the illusion that this is anything better than cowardice.”

There was a clarity to blue, and he could not understand why this thought sank its teeth into him, that wasn’t quite present in the red-brown of Tifa’s eyes. In its place was warmth, warmth that couldn’t quite pretend that he couldn’t see behind silk and steel. Kindness that could not be mistaken for otherworldly or angelic. She could not be revered as something greater than him, no matter how desperately he tried to lower himself to something that was beneath her. She simply, as she had put it herself, was.

And she was foolish and human, and that was why she was stubbornly remaining here. Why she gave too much and asked too little, because she was flawed in the ways that made her that way. She did not turn away because she did not know any better.

But now she did.

The metal beast’s many round legs were drawing it closer now, as it belched smoke into a canopy that was already coated black with the stuff. Its many parts moved with and against each other with metallic screeches and clanks, and it gave a great whistling cry as it approached them.

Tifa stood, dousing the flames with a swift kick bathed in water magic to the base of the fire. When the ‘train’ stopped, she boarded and turned back.

“I’m not convinced.” She said flatly. “But I’m not going to have you whining about having no choice. I go alone, and I warn the others. You come with me, and we find some other way. And, lucky you, you get to choose.”

Someone was there, just at the edges of his mind, giving him second chance after second chance. Reminding him that he was the one in control of his actions. That he had a choice. That he did not have to do this. Kinder to him than his own mind was.

Whoever it was, if he was going to think so highly of them, it might be worth listening to them for once.

As the metal beast gave that whistling cry once more and began to strain itself to move forward and Tifa’s face began to fall, he stepped forward to stand at her side.

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't end up quite as shippy as I intended it to, as a result of the characters involved being the most cautious fuckers about relationships that this franchise has.


End file.
